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An anonymous reader writes "Last week's linux.conf.au saw the return of the rogue access points. These are Wi-Fi access points which bear the same SSID as official conference hotspots. Often it might be a simple mistake, but sometimes it's more nefarious. To combat the attacks this year, conference organisers installed a Linux-based Wi-Fi 'intrusion prevention and detection system' supplied by sponsor Xirrius." At most conferences I've been to, I'd be grateful just to be able to get on any access point.

For the first few years of its existence, it would have been fair to say that Canonical was essentially polishing, packaging and publishing Debian Linux (and Gnome) to create the base Ubuntu desktop, to great acclaim. For the past few years, though, the company has pushed new looks and new applications (cf. Unity and Ubuntu TV), and refused to stick with prettifying existing interfaces. Now, Barence writes with this excerpt from PC Pro: "Ubuntu is set to replace the 30-year-old computer menu system with a 'Head-Up Display' that allows users to simply type or speak menu commands. Instead of hunting through drop-down menus to find application commands, Ubuntu's Head-Up Display lets users type what they want to do into a search box. The system suggests possible commands as the user begins typing – entering 'Rad' would bring up the Radial blur command in the GIMP art package, for example. HUD also uses fuzzy matching and learns from past searches to ensure the correct commands are offered to users. Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth told PC Pro the HUD will make it easier for people to learn new software packages, and migrate from Windows to Linux software without having to relearn menus. The HUD will first appear in Ubuntu 12.04."

jrepin writes with this quote from a post at the European Commission's JoinUp site:
"The administration of Spain's autonomous region of Extremadura is moving to a complete open source desktop, replacing the current proprietary desktop platform, confirms the region's CIO, Teodomiro Cayetano López. The IT department started a project to install the Debian distribution on all 40,000 desktop PCs. 'The project is really advanced and we hope to start the deployment the next spring, finishing it in December.' The project makes it Europe's second largest open source desktop migration, between the French Gendarmerie (90,000 desktops) and the German city of Munich (14,000 desktops)."

MojoMax writes "The advent of Windows 8 is drawing ever nearer and recently we have learned that ARM devices installed with Windows 8 will not be able to disable the UEFI secure boot feature that many of us are deeply concerned about. However, UEFI is still a very real danger to Linux and the freedom to use whichever OS you chose. Regardless of information for OEMs to enable customers to install their own keys, such as that published by the Linux Foundation, there are still very serious and as yet unresolved issues with using secure boot and Linux. These issues are best summarized quoting Matthew Garrett: 'Signing the kernel isn't enough. Signed Linux kernels must refuse to load any unsigned kernel modules. Virtualbox on Linux? Dead. Nvidia binary driver on Linux? Dead. All out of tree kernel modules? Utterly, utterly dead. Building an updated driver locally? Not going to happen. That's going to make some people fairly unhappy.'"

angry tapir writes "Women's participation in open source development is at a far lower level than women's participation in proprietary software development. One of the groups that aims to change this is the Ada Initiative: A non-profit organization formed last year. I recently caught up with its two founders, Linux kernel developer Valerie Aurora and comp sci PhD student Mary Gardiner, to discuss the project."

Timothy Lord caught up with Raspberry Pi product leader Eben Upton at CES. The long-awaited $25 Linux single-board computers are finally being shipped from the Chinese factory where they're being assembled and will be available for sale in just a few weeks. Eben talks not only about the Raspberry Pi boards and the add-on Gertboard, but about the eBay auction that helped finance Raspberry Pi. Timothy says he considers Eben Upton one of his "personal tech-world heroes." After watching this video, maybe he'll be one of yours, too. Read on below to watch.

New submitter Microlith writes "Microsoft has updated their WHQL certification requirements for Windows 8, and placed specific restrictions on ARM platforms that will make it impossible to install non-Microsoft operating systems on ARM devices, and make it impossible to turn off or customize such security. Choice quotes from the certification include from page 116, section 20: 'On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only Standard Mode may be enabled' — which prevents users from customizing their security, and in section 21: 'Disabling Secure MUST NOT be possible on ARM systems' to prevent you from booting any other OSes."

joabj writes "The ISC is seeking some open source magic for the next version of the widely used BIND. Although the BIND is already open source, most of the work thus far done on the DNS server software has come from contractors, the government and Unix vendors. 'The goal is to move away from having BIND a heavily sponsored corporate product,' said BIND 10 manager Shane Kerr. Kerr is hoping that more eyes will equal fewer bugs, and that more users will go ahead and implement the features they've been requesting themselves. BIND 10, due by the end of the year, features a new modular architecture, one designed to circumvent many of the security woes that have bedeviled BIND 9."

PerlJedi writes "InformationWeek reports that LG is the latest in a string of companies who have been bullied into paying 'license fees' to Microsoft for the use of Android on their products. 'Microsoft said the deal with LG means that 70% of Android-based smartphones sold in the U.S. are now covered by its licensing program. ... Microsoft does not disclose how much revenue it's obtaining from Android, Chrome, and Linux licenses, but some analysts believe it may be substantial, to the point where the company is making significant profits from the mobile revolution even though its own offering, Windows Phone, commands a market share of less than 2%, according to Gartner.'"

sfcrazy writes with news that developers for the Tizen project, an open source mobile OS based on MeeGo (itself a child of Moblin and Maemo), have posted a preview of their source code and SDK. They warn, "Please keep in mind that this is a very early preview and is not yet designed for use to create production applications. Further enhancements and improvements to Tizen and its development environment will continue as we work towards a formal release over the coming months." The source code is available here.